The first fax offered an opportunity to make more than $40 million in Nigeria if the pre-selected doctor would just wire $23,000 to an off-shore facility in Morocco as seed money to participate in a syndicate.

"Your first check for three million American dollars is waiting to be mailed" was written on the bottom.

The remaining faxes were demands from an Internet pharmacy that he send his authorized signature to complete prescriptions from patients he had just seen this morning. The tenor of the faxes was somewhat threatening if immediate authorization was not forthcoming.

Dr. Wolinski, in his mid-50s, was livid. He marched to the pharmacy and demanded to know instantly what he was charging for several heartworm and flea medications. In another staccato delivery that to the staff simulated a singular expanded microburst of sound, he asked for every chart of every client who has ever asked for medications by any means other than from his practice. Vernon was now a mixture of white heat and crimson. His countenance seemed to radiate explosive energy in full circumference from his portly little body. His staff was now frozen in both fear and awe of the erupting volcano before them.

Suddenly Katie, the most senior member of the staff, jumped to action having seen this phenomenon before on selected occasions. The rest of the staff needed time to fully digest the fullness of the spectacle before them. Then slowly, as if released from a spell, they emerged at random and scurried to help seek the information in question.

Spreading stormAs several clients waited up front, they could hear the commotion and gnashing of teeth in the back. Some were wondering if they needed to call family members or drive home and tune in CNN for disaster information. Things certainly were not right in this office, they thought.

Now Dr. Wolinski grabbed the closest phone and called Charlie Odum, his best friend and classmate across town. The conversation became quite animated with an ebb and flow of vitriol evident from both ends of the receiver. Finally, he put the phone down and announced to everyone within earshot that clients could wait while he called the Dept. of Consumer Affairs, FDA, EPA, the attorney general, the governor and a number of other agencies with acronyms that seemed to trail off his tongue in a bizarre alphabet soup of dialogue.

Vernon ultimately discovered from Katie that his prices for an assortment of quasi-OTC medicaments were substantially, and in some cases ridiculously, higher than those reported through the grapevine from a range of Internet sources. He just shrugged. Vernon, now calmed to the point of slow boil, proceeded to pontificate to those within earshot that these companies are either buying these products from nefarious sources in the Middle East or from worthless cads within the profession.

He next implied that some of these contraband items must have been hijacked (Brink's truck-style) from the back docks of some unknown industrial zone where all these drug products seem to emanate. At this point he smiled and seemed satisfied with the progress he had made in establishing his vaunted position within the properly established and hallowed market channel.

Final strawMeanwhile, Betty had been waiting for her moment to intercede on behalf of the clients and the disappearing morning. She stated that a client was waiting in one of the exam rooms.

Vernon entered the room to see "Billy," an obese Weimaraner, with a penchant for urinating every time someone made eye contact with him.

"Hello, Mrs. Schmidt. How is Billy today?"

"Is something wrong, Doctor?" she said, with only a slight hint of her German heritage.

"We are having a great day," he purred in a completely straight and benign manner.

"Billy's fine, he just needs his heartworm test and I need to be on my way to my bridge party. I am a bit late now," she said without any noticeable inflection.

Vernon proceeded to pull the blood for the test on Billy while his thoughts were meandering back to the Internet problem. While working on Billy he was brought back to reality only to regularly mop up the unending drainage from Billy's underside. He then mused to himself that at his clinic certain dogs seem to be able to endlessly manufacture urine on a logarithmic scale.

Vernon was awakened from his musing by a somewhat bashful cough from Mrs. Schmidt.

Mrs. Schmidt cleared her throat and asked, "Doctor, will you please sign this authorization for heartworm medications for Billy?" She hesitated briefly and continued, "Assuming his test is negative, of course."

Mrs. Schmidt, unknowingly, had just thrown cold water into Vernon's face. His heart rate doubled as he gazed over the scene. His wastebasket was brimming with soppy urine and his shirt compromised with moist saffron spots.

He was aghast, bewildered and not just a little bit hurt. He was speechless for a moment and then lit into a sermon that would have made Billy Graham envious.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Schmidt had little understanding for the internal dynamics of veterinary economics and 20 minutes later left the practice with a newfound resolve to find a veterinarian she could "work with."

Shoe on the other footLater that day while Vernon was sitting at his computer, his wife called concerning the airline tickets to the AAHA convention. It seems that George Jenkins, a very good client and owner of a new travel agency in town, had a pretty decent airline price for those dates. He scribbled the figures down and without a second thought double-clicked on Expedia.com

The drug problem in veterinary medicine is not new. In fact, all veterinarians inherited the way they charge for services based on the premise that the veterinarian is entitled to make a significant portion of income by inflating the perceived value of drugs and products and minimizing the value of professional services.

In the old days, most farmers were less educated and drug companies sold to veterinarians exclusively because it insured throughput of their products. Veterinarians and drug reps were a tight knit fraternity. In effect, veterinarians viewed themselves as druggists with an exclusive franchise for drug distribution. A bonus was the medical and surgical oversight of local farms thrown in at little cost to the farmer.

Self-esteem issueHiding from having to charge appropriate professional fees, of course, is a self-esteem issue that goes back further than anyone can remember. This ideology also infected the optometry profession where professional services were packaged inside the cost of "a pair of glasses." This worked well until Wal-Mart et al, changed the playing field. Now optometrists, as well as many pharmacists, are employees, not business owners. This is called the "doc in a box" phenomenon and is the next logical step for our profession unless some pretty narrow-minded thinking is addressed.

Nidus of issueWe can go back about 50 years and see the nidus for this pricing approach.

Back in the days of yore, veterinarians made a significant income vaccinating hogs for hog cholera. Hundreds of thousands of pigs were vaccinated. Also millions of dollars (mostly government subsidized) passed to the veterinary community from this disease. Veterinarians could give away practically all other services while on the farm if they were able to vaccinate hogs in the process. Farmers grew used to this approach and were only too happy to see their veterinarians working tirelessly on their farm.

When the hog cholera situation "deteriorated" into a mop-up operation, veterinarians were obliged to find the next golden goose and a series of products flowing through "their hands only" became the darlings of every practitioner.

Let us go down memory lane in a somewhat chronological order:

Sulfas

Combiotic®

Various castration procedures

LA 200® (long-acting tetracycline)

"Tube worming" horses

Juggin' horses

Certain "veterinary only" diets

Flea/tick medications

P.S. For those of you too young or too "small animal" to remember the aforementioned, let me paraphrase a famous quote-those who ignore (or are ignorant) of the past are destined to repeat it.